DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline: Continuous ROI For Your Organization

Progress DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline enables easy integration from multiple data sources that matter to you.

I think anyone that owns a pet will tell you, they are expensive. The allure began for many, like me; with the opportunity to get a “free dog,” avoiding many of the upfront costs associated with either purchasing from a breeder or pet store. But that is pretty much where the free ride ends. Thinking back to just the past month, my dog has cost me $900 in vet bills and $400 in boarding. Free has become an expensive undertaking.

So, what does any of that have to do with DataDirect and data access? Well, hear me out. Every blog needs a segue, right?

In my industry, the main thing every software company competes with is not only other vendors, but customers that look, and perhaps eventually decide on building their own solution ‘in-house’. These home-grown approaches to connecting to your data often focus on building your own driver or coding directly to the data source’s APIs. On the surface, this often appears to be the path of least resistance, but it comes with some challenges down the road:

Developing In-House: Things to Consider:

• Opportunity Cost: What is the opportunity cost of taking your talented and busy developers off existing projects to have them develop a custom data connector? Time is money and this is no different.
• Security: What level of confidence will you have that the in-house developed data connector will be secure to protect your sensitive data? Will your security team be able to understand the complete security profile of what you developed, including external dependencies? How about testing and external security audits, will these be part of your in-house development cycles?
• Support and Maintenance: Once the in-house connection driver is complete, who will be assigned to support it? What happens when the data source API is updated and it breaks your integration? Is the original developer still on staff and do they have the time to fix it?

DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline

Progress DataDirect has a solution in our Hybrid Data Pipeline product. While Progress DataDirect has been known for years for its robust connectivity to dozens of different data sources, with Hybrid Data Pipeline, Progress DataDirect takes this connectivity even a step further by enabling:

• Identity Management for your Data Sources that allows you to control data access from a single location.
• Universal Clients for all BI Tools using ODBC, JDBC and OData that eliminate the need to deploy and update numerous drivers. This greatly reduces the amount of time your staff will need to dedicate to the maintaining data connectors, and free them up for other strategic assignments.
• Operational Visibility into data source utilization to let you see not only who accessed the data, but what they accessed.  
• Support for your investment to include a community resource portal, support guides and of course, access to DataDirect experts.

With the Progress DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline, you can quickly share a data source—be it an on-premises SQL Server, a cloud data warehouse, Salesforce or even a private REST API—using our easy-to-use web interface.

The DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline also eliminates common roadblocks to data connectivity while ensuring trusted security. These include:

• Addressing security lapses that cause internal vulnerabilities.
• Controlling access to sensitive data and comply with strict data privacy laws.
• Consistently applying corporate authentication models to any data source, regardless of native support.

All of this is precisely why 80% of BI vendors partner with Progress DataDirect, and thousands of organizations from various industries rely on Progress DataDirect: Easy integration from numerous data sources that matter to them, security and operational controls.

To give a real-world customer example of all this, recently, a mid-size semiconductor manufacturer wanted to securely share data for internal users without providing database credentials—all the while maintaining access logs, as well as recording the SQL issued to the data sources.

Using DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline as a data gateway, they provided access to sources such as Salesforce, SQL Server, Jira, OpenEdge and even internal REST APIs.

Users authenticated to the pipeline with their LDAP credentials, without ever needing credentials to access the database—or even knowing what the underlying database was. And this is just one example of many regarding how DataDirect is benefitting organizations.

If you would like to learn more about DataDirect and how the DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline can benefit your organization, feel free to let us know or sign up for one of our many webinars on the subject.

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